CANTERBURY, England — After almost 1,000 years, murder in the cathedral is still luring visitors
to Canterbury.

At the Canterbury Cathedral in 1170, Archbishop Thomas Becket was killed by four knights who
thought they were doing the bidding of King Henry II. Becket became a martyr, and the cathedral, a
place of pilgrimage.

The homicide was the subject of
Murder in the Cathedral, a verse drama by T.S. Eliot, and was more famously immortalized
in Geoffrey Chaucer’s 14th-century work
The Canterbury Tales, which was written in now-obsolete Middle English and focused on one
such journey in what had become an annual spring pilgrimage.

And specially from every shires ende

Of Englande to Caunterbury they wende,

The holy blisful martir for to seke,

That hem hath holpen whan that they were seeke.

It is said that 100,000 pilgrims made their way to the cathedral in 1420 — including, as the
poem says in its last line, the sick (seeke) whom the shrine cured (hath holpen, or
helped).

Today, Canterbury Cathedral draws 1 million visitors a year.

Chaucer’s pilgrims made the journey on horseback; today’s visitors are more likely to arrive by
plane and car, train or bus from London or Dover. With sites, shops, and restaurants, pubs and
tearooms concentrated largely in the Old Town area, Canterbury is a comfortable walking city. It is
relatively small, with a population of about 150,000.

The Stour River runs through the city and, at some points, is navigable for small boats.
Rowboats and punts (flat-bottomed boats similar to gondolas) can be hired.

But by far the biggest tourist attraction is Canterbury Cathedral, founded in 597. (Visitors
must pay an entrance fee.)

The exterior of the cathedral — an impressive 236 feet high — reflects Romanesque, English
Gothic and Gothic architectural styles, with round and pointed arches, blind arcades and pinnacles
of the 14th-century perpendicular Gothic nave.

The Trinity Chapel was built for the Shrine of St. Thomas, which stood from 1220 to 1538, when
it was destroyed on orders of King Henry VIII. The floor of the current chapel has a set of inlaid
marble roundels representing zodiac signs, months, virtues and vices. A candle marks the spot of
the shrine.

Canterbury offers two other UNESCO World Heritage sites: St. Augustine’s Abbey, mostly the ruins
of the monastery where St. Augustine’s monks lived; and St. Martin’s Church, England’s oldest
working parish church.

Another popular tourist site is the Norman Canterbury Castle — or at least its remains. The
castle was one of three original royal castles of Kent, built soon after the Battle of Hastings in
1066 on the main Roman road from Dover to London. The route was taken by William the Conqueror that
year.

The medieval St. Margaret’s Church is home to an audiovisual presentation of five stories from
The Canterbury Tales (told in modern English).

Aside from that and a pub named after the work, Canterbury has little evidence of Chaucer.

Another famous literary name with a connection to Canterbury is Christopher Marlowe, the
Elizabethan poet and playwright who was born in Canterbury in 1564.

The city’s modern theater house is named for him, and his death is noted at the clock tower of
St. George’s Church, where he was baptized. The clock tower is all that survived German bombings
during World War II.

In front of the Marlowe Theatre is a 19th-century statue of a muse surrounded by effigies of
characters from his plays.

Canterbury proved to be a charming and comfortable small city with a big history.